Vibration of a vehicle body during the running of the vehicle, such as pitching and bouncing vibration, etc., is generated owing to braking and driving forces (or an inertial force) and/or other external forces acting on a vehicle body at the acceleration and deceleration of a vehicle, which forces are reflected in a “wheel torque” which a wheel (particularly a driving wheel during driving) exerts on a road surface (a torque acting between a wheel and a contacted road surface). Then, in the field of vibration damping control for vehicles, it is proposed to suppress vibration of a vehicle body during the running of a vehicle by adjusting a wheel torque through a control of a driving output of an engine or other driving device of the vehicle (For example, see Patent documents 1 and 2). In such a vibration damping control through a driving output control, when an acceleration or deceleration demand of a vehicle is made or when an external force (a disturbance) has acted on a vehicle body to vary a wheel torque, pitching and bouncing vibration which would arise in a vehicle body is predicted by using a motion model constructed based upon an assumption of a dynamic model of so-called sprung mass vibration or sprung mass and unsprung mass vibration of a vehicle body, and then, the driving output of a driving device of the vehicle is adjusted so as to suppress the predicted vibration. In a case of such a type of vibration damping control, the generation of vibrational energy is suppressed by the adjustment of the source of the vibration-generating force, rather than by absorbing the generated vibrational energy like in the vibration damping control with suspensions, and therefore, the relatively prompt vibration damping effect and good energy efficiency are advantageously obtained. Further, in such a vibration damping control through a driving output control, the object to be controlled is focused into the driving output (driving torque) of a driving device, and thus, the adjustment in the control is relatively easy.
Patent document 1: Patent laid-open publication 2004-168148
Patent document 2: Patent laid-open publication 2006-69472